Good Morning, TBL’ers,

The University at Albany’s Spring 2014 edition of our TBL Academy is scheduled for May 20 & 22. While our primary goal for this extended workshop is to prepare UAlbany faculty and graduate students for adopting TBL, it has become a tradition to keep open a few seats for non-UAlbany guests. The cohort approach allows would-be TBL adopters to experience TBL from the student’s perspective, as a key part of thinking about TBL from the teacher’s perspective. Over the two days participants will

· learn how to design and prepare a course using TBL,

· plan and develop key TBL components (4-S tasks; RATs; etc.),

· develop one entire learning sequence as a product of participation, as well as…

· get and give feedback on TBL components, and on TBL course syllabi

Participants will also learn about TBL classroom  management, and explore strategies for peer evaluation.

If you have colleagues who have shown interest in TBL, and who might benefit from learning along with other new adopters, we invite you to share this information with them. Below is the promotional information we use to recruit UAlbany instructors. For guest registration please go to https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TBLMay2014Guest.

Colleagues,

The winding down of the academic year provides a natural opportunity for reflection. We invite you to do the following brief analysis of the courses you teach:

· Are your students consistently doing the reading they need to do, so they can be ready for higher level applications of course concepts?

· Are your students taking full responsibility for their own learning?

· Are your students taking responsibility for helping other students in the course learn?

These are key components of a rich classroom experience for students, and there are multiple ways to ensure that they occur. Having a  plan and a system helps. Abundant evidence from research points to one approach that works for many university instructors—in both large and small sections—and we invite you to consider if it might work for you. Join us in May to learn a method that has already transformed many dozens of courses at UAlbany, and thousands internationally.

Instructional Leadership Academy, May 20 & 22

Turn Your Students into Independent, Self-Motivated Thinkers with Team-Based Learning

The Michaelsen Method of TBL (http://www.teambasedlearning.org/) is currently being used successfully at UAlbany by more than 200 faculty and GTA’s—in undergraduate and graduate, small and large classes, in areas as disparate as Computer Science, Public Health, Criminal Justice, Informatics, Political Science, Public Administration, Social Welfare, Information Literacy, Psychology, History, Statistics, Physics, and Philosophy, to name just a few. The May Academy will take participants through the process of transforming a traditional course into a TBL course.   Interested faculty members and graduate students are asked to submit a brief application for this academy at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TBLMay2014Guest.

What UAlbany instructors are saying about TBL:

• This is the first time I have actually *seen* my students learning...It's really fascinating to experience.
• Not only did the students perform better than I would usually expect on the midterm exam, but a greater proportion of students seem to be…genuinely engaged…
• I couldn’t believe how good some of the discussion was – the majority gets it, and the discussions are good even when they get the wrong answer...
• It’s completely changed my classroom and my relationship with students.  I’ll never be able to go back to lecturing…

What UAlbany students are saying about TBL: 

• This is definitely my hardest class, but it’s my favorite class to come to because it’s made me more vocal…[TBL] helps you be able to really know what you’re talking about…
• I think the accountability factor in the way this class is designed really [helps]. People don’t do it because they’re simply going to get an A if they do it. You have to do it because the way the assignments are tailored in this class--you’re not just reading something and summarizing it. You actually have to understand the concept and put it into a coherent argument or critically apply it to something, which, that’s the real world and that’s how things work.

Institute for Teaching, Learning and Academic Leadership

http://itlal.org